13 lines
3.5 KiB
Markdown
13 lines
3.5 KiB
Markdown
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# Defining Kapwa Leaders
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Kapwa leadership pulls together a variety of models and ideas from leadership and organizational theory. I began building this concept to provide a framework for elevating student leaders, grounded in Filipino culture and my personal experiences as a Filipino American student. This framework is offered to all, not only Filipino students, who might find it applicable to their leadership or educational practice. Under this model, a kapwa leader is one who embraces _kapwa_, the core concept of Filipino psychology as introduced by Vergilio Enriquez, as a guiding value through which leadership is expressed and transformed.
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_Kapwa_ refers to a shared sense of self in Filipino culture, which has implied moral and normative aspects and bridges even the deepest individual parts of a person with other beings, including people considered external to one’s culture as well as plants, animals, and inanimate objects. A kapwa leader seeks the transpersonal awareness found in _kapwa_, where the self, "I" or _ako_, and the other, "we" or _tayo_, do not disappear but unite to become a greater whole and share a codependent, collective existence. An archipelago, like the Philippines, provides a fitting analogy: although the islands appear as distinct parts and can be described as such, they are connected, rather than separated, by and under the water. An event, change, or transformation taking place on one island has a perceptible impact on the other islands. By this analogy, the actions and experiences of one being are understood as imparted on and experienced by all other beings.
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While a kapwa leader broadens their existential awareness to include others, one starts to recognize spectrums of difference in the world around them. Rather than taking guidance purely from one's own perspective, a kapwa leader comes to find multiple purposes, in their own and in others' perspectives, for being, knowing, doing, and living. Beyond leadership, they might practice other roles: follower, teacher, student, culture worker, change agent, or liaison. Kapwa leaders seek involvement within their community, investing in others' well-being in addition to their own, and they become oriented towards change and service. As this embrace of _kapwa_ grows, a multiplicity emerges in leadership identity and self-concept.
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The concept of _kapwa_ includes all beings and the differences and similarities which arise between them. This awareness of others definitively includes and recognizes marginalized people. Consequently, according to Enriquez, _kapwa_ is "definitely inconsistent with exploitative human interactions." Kapwa leaders work to expose and understand contradictions in society and in the cultures they inhabit, and a leader's sense of _kapwa_ compels them to pursue resolutions to said contradictions. As such, a kapwa leader seeks to reject authoritarianism, domination, and systems of oppression; furthermore, they promote justice, restoration, and inclusion. Developing a practice of interrogating and dismantling injustice is central to this realization of kapwa leadership.
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While my concept of kapwa leadership integrates other models, understandings, experiences, and ideas, _kapwa_ is a critical value which I use to contextualize the primary elements of kapwa leadership. My writing on the subject here simply establishes a foundation for my concept, and I expect to incorporate newer perspectives into kapwa leadership's development as I encounter other ideas and my perception changes.
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